Hi Drac, what do you think would have happened (a what if) if the British pacific fleet had of encountered a typhoon like typhoon cobra when it hit the Us fleet?
The vast majority of decorations/awards given to ships are usually given for doing the bare minimum of what was expected for that ship, being involved in actions that other ships from the same navy would have been able to accomplish at less expense, simply for being present at a battle even if the ship did little or nothing, and in some cases even to ships that ended up being detrimental to their own side during the engagement in question (I. E. San Francisco’s decorations for her actions during First Guadalcanal). How do you feel about such decorations, and do you feel they obscure or mislead people about a ship’s achievements?
I think I still like to know why on Indianpolis return trip after droping her cargo the request for a destroyer escort was dined? was it made to keep the identity of her cargo secret or there is some further cargo she was carrying that the Naval department does not want the Japanese to get any ideas of whats going on?
Can you think of some interesting naval anachronisms? I.e. historical things/events that seem like a miss-match of eras. E.g. paddle steamer aircraft carriers or U-boats torpedoing sailing ships
I listen to this to fall asleep, not too interested in ships but the pure flow of information is so satisfying. I have listened to so many of these 3 hour ones!
Some additional info related to your talk about triple-expansion engines: I was on the USS FOX (CG-33) in the early 1970s. It was a TERRIER-equipped AA guided missile "cruiser" (ship type of all of this class of chip changed by the stroke of a pen) and had just been overhauled and I was part of a group checking out the TERRIER weapon system, including actual firing at test targets. It was my first time aboard a warship at sea. During this several-week process, I learned some things about the ship's powerplant: (1) The boilers had 1200-pounds/square-inch pressure, DOUBLE that used by the most powerful US warship boilers in WWII. (2) When I was passing a door to the boiler room while the ship was doing high-speed trails, it opened to let a power-plant crewman -- termed a "snipe" -- come onto the outer region of the ship. A blast of hot air hit me in the face like opening an food-c00king oven turned to "broil". Those boilers and the rooms they were in were HOT! (3) When locating a steam leak from a pipe or casing, the steam was invisible until it had cooled down considerably. It was also EXTREMELY dangerous! One of the main ways to find such leaks, I was told, was to get a wooden broom handle and very slowly move forward into the area of the leak, waving the handle from side to side and up and down in front of you. You found the leak when the handle WAS SLICED IN TWO BY THE STEAM JET!! Those boiler rooms were Hell on Earth, it seems...
Yeah, superheated steam is no joke, basically a WaterJet Cutter without the abrasive. In exchange it's so hot it's "dry" and has no or very little water vapor, making it invisible until it starts to condensate the air. The thought of there being an invisible, undetected leak that can power wash through your skin and bones in under a second; with the added bonus of 2nd and 3rd degree burns is terrifying. To make it even worse, I know with regular steam it burns you but doesn't destroy your nerves; so you'll still feel and keep feeling everything. It also won't cauterize the wound, so if it's bad and you're in shock you better have a buddy nearby.
The better way to find leaks was to tie a rag to the end of the handle since that would find it quicker than the handle itself. I used to work with a 1500# steam system and yeah steam at that pressure can cut wood but it won't do it instantly.
You are the first English historian that I have EVER heard to use the words "British" and "failure" together. Not bashing, but in literature, speaking to other English historians and battlefield guides (respected 'guild members', or even (probable) English/Britsh commentors (which may be unfair to include with the former two categories) there's usually a extensive excuse or fancy dance around an admission of failure. Very refreshing. Really like your videos and narration.
A lot of destroyers make good 'Ship Too Angry to Die' candidates. These were very, very angry vessels. I'd also nominate the second USS Laffey (she came by the nickname of The Ship That Would Not Die honestly), the other ships of Taffy 3, and most of the ships at Pearl Harbor (won't die, even when you sink them), with special mention to USS Shaw (no worries, mate- we're still sailing half a ship!). Musashi gets a honorable mention as she managed to eat a lot of firepower before she finally sank, even if she was never able to enter surface combat.
On the Midway we did an emergency crash back stop. We closed the ahead throttle and then opened the astern throttle valves quickly. The whole back end of the ship bounced up and down violently.
Concerning the superiority of Russian 12" APC shells: During the development of the British post-Jutland 12" Greenboy APC shells, there was a comparative test of the Russian 12" (Model 1908, believe) at a 20 degree impact angle against 8" British Cemented Armor (CA). It was found that the Russian shell could remain intact after penetrating this thickness and the British shell could not. The reason was that this British shell was made with CAST steel blanks shaped roughly to the final shell shape that were then machined to the final form by machining away the outer and inner excess steel and then hardened and tempered to give the final completed shell body and nose, to which the base plug and AP cap/windscreen and driving band were attached. No mechanical working of the shell body or nose was applied, unlike the heavy forging using presses and hammers done to the larger 13.5-16" Greenboy and later NELSON/RODNEY APC shells prior to the final machining and hardening/tempering. Those larger British APC shells, due to this pre-machining metal-working, greatly improved the "grain" of the shell's crystal structure, something which was not done to the 12", with the result that the larger British APC shells could easily penetrate in an intact condition 2/3-rds-caliber CA armor at 20 degrees, which became their acceptance test standard. Indeed, during the HOOD armor design tests, these hard-capped British 15" APC shells easily penetrated half-caliber CA plates at 40 degrees (!!) with minimal damage. No later British large APC or even the smaller 8" SAPC or 6" CPBC shells were ever made directly from a cast blank ever again, to my knowledge.
Given the weirdly overperforming shells are Russian 1911 pattern SAP shells, the ones with the really high C/M ratio, thin walls, etc. it'd be interesting to see how Gaijin expect those to penetrate as well as they are.
The Douglas Skyraider could connect the folded wings together with a line or bar; for the AD-5, this bar could also be used to mount a block-and-tackle for hoisting cargo into the fuselage. Presumably any aircraft with tie-down points at the wing tips could also use those to connect the wings "over the fuselage".
In regards to Russia winning against Japan, I think you overlooked some knockon effects. Losing that war was a severe blow to the prestige of the Zar. If they instead win, the soviet revolution might fail or not even happen in the first place and that could have massive changes in history. One of the more outlandish, but still possible scenarios would be that emboldened by their victory Russia invades more of China, gets embroiled in a lengthy and costly slog and thus refuses Serbia's call to arms, making WW1 not happen at it's historical start and delaying it until some other trigger sparks off the powder keg.
@17:00 USS Laffey DD-724. Who’s moniker “The ship that would not die” also comes to mind due to her taking on bomb and kamikaze strikes. She’s even still afloat today as a museum ship
On Battle Honours: in cases of ships being gallant losses, the VC is often awarded to the captain - at least that's how the citations for Roope (Glowworm), Fegan (Jervis Bay) and Wilkinson (Li-Wo) read.
I'm surprised you didn't mention one of the ways the Russians would have had a greater chance of winning Tsushima: the Kamchatka somehow manages to sink itself as it sails out of port.
Yeah but then the Russian fleet would’ve succumbed to Japan’s North Sea Torpedo Boat Squadron! Clearly Kamchatka foiled that fleet of Torpedo Boats before they could threaten the main Russian Fleet!
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress.
Exactly. It should be mesured against the origin of the term, the battle of Ascyllum, where Phyrrus of Epirus scored a victory over Rome, but sustained such geavy losses that he had to withdraw his army from Italian Peninsula altogether.
Hey drack the smell on ship is oils I just went to nj and I miss that smell. My ffg had same smell. In us navy x is zebra condition Great job overall. Thanks for showing my ship on episode ffg53. I think someone asked in one ep about the 30 hf whips. Aft we cranked them down so ciwis wouldn’t cut down
35:05 I think one of the major things that could happen if Transfers and sales were allowed is possibly another arms race in South America and France seeing what Italy and Germany is doing may pick up a battleship or battle cruiser or 2 as an interim. Same with the Dutch with their grand ideas for a navy in being in the far East, a cheap often would be to have the Iron Dukes or something like that
I chewed some of the alternatives in a comment a couple hours ago. The South American powers didn't have the money. The two surviving Invincibles were offered to Chile. Chile declined. Agincourt was offered to Brazil. Brazil declined. The only reasonably possible buyer would be the Dutch. They would want a ship that was "turn key", not something they would need to pour a lot of money into. They would want something oil fired, because that was the fuel they had in abundance, on Borneo. iirc, the RN did not put a Farthing into the Iron Dukes and Tiger in the 20s. They were never given torpedo bulges, never converted to oil fuel, no supplemental deck armor added. The USN however, did pour millions into modernizing Florida and Utah, only a few years before Florida was scrapped and Utah converted to a target ship. They received new oil-fired boilers (surplus from the North Dakota program), bulges and deck armor (also surplus from the ND program). But they still carried 12" guns and plodded along at 21kts. Would the Dutch want them, in the early 30s?
@@stevevalley7835 I think they would, assuming they could afford Florida and Utah. The Japanese still had the Fusos and Ises, granted with 14 inch guns, in the battleline. Sending Florida and Utah to the east would force the Japanese to deploy at minimum the Fusos or the Ises, perhaps even both to guaranty killing them without getting hit too bad. Or it might draw out the Nagatos. Any attempt to take Dutch possessions would have to include battleships since even old 12 inch battleships outclass heavy cruisers. So either Japanese hold back from the Dutch colonies for the decisive battle or they have to loose at minimum two Battleships from the line while they fight Florida and Utah. At least going by their plans before the Pearl Harbor plan. Likely it wouldn't have changed much just the burning of oil to get the Japanese battleships to the fight and another battleship vs battleship fight for the historians. The US Fleet Problems really show the difference in capability of 30s and early 40s aircraft. Heck the battles of the java sea might have gone very differently with a couple of old heavyweights present.
@@drafty9580 for the heck of it, I tried to find a sale price for Florida, but came up empty. She was broken up in a navy yard, so no labor and material cost for the breakup. The newspapers said the metal was offered for bid, but did not report what the winning bid was. A dozen years earlier, Dreadnought was sold for scrap, for $176,000. The first question would be could the Netherlands buy Florida and Utah for less that it cost to build De Ruyter? I have not found construction cost for De Ruyter. Of course, the second question is would the Netherlands want two slow, old, ships?
One of my ships was a Knox Class DE/FF that had large fin stabilizers. They did indeed cause a very odd and somewhat disorienting roll which at times seemed contrary to anything close the desired stability. They also made a good bit of low pitched noise within the hull as they operated which if your berth was close amidships would keep you up at night.
I nominate HMAS Canberra (1), not as a cruiser too angry to die but rather as a cruiser in too foul a mood so to do. Let's face it, after being disabled by Mikawa's force; having to then put up with your american allies taking 263 5" shells and five torpedos to scuttle you would be enough to put anyone in a vile state of mind.
1:47:03 Pyrrhic victories are usually ascribed to *wars,* no? Like if you beat the Persians, but weaken yourself so much that the Muslim Arabs can conquer you. Also, Coral Sea was a *strategic victory* for the Allies, since it stopped Japanese expansion, and secured SLOCs to Australia. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Battle of The Chesapeake\Virginia Capes would be an eXcellent special. This and Arnold's actions at Second Saratoga were truly the decisive events of the War of American Colonial Independence, one being utterly dependent upon the other. Editted for typo.
I would have thought that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was a definite pyrrhic victory. Yes the Japanese wrecked the US battle fleet, but they failed to knocked out PH as a base of operations for the US Pacific Fleet, and they also forced the US to use aircraft carriers as offensive weapons (instead of just a scouting force) which ultimately resulted in the defeat of the IJN.
I would argue against Coral Sea being a Pyric victory because the two damage Japanese carriers were absent at Midway when their presence could have turned a Japanese defeat into victory.
Tbh Drach I think there are nuances to consider when describing a "Pyrrhic Victory". One of the nuances is was the tactical losses incured worth the strategic gain ? Or say, we are producing X amount of ships annually but the enemy can only produce Y amount of comparative ships so our losses maybe greater but the attrition on the enemy is of greater worth. Battle of Kursk comes to mind in this regard concerning PanzerWaffe loss replacement to the Soviet T34 replacements. To myself a "Real Pyrrhic Victory" is perhaps when losses are not abled to be ammended which leaves one's forces perminatly disabled by such a victory. Acceptable although large losses which would achieve the crippling attrition on the enemy was clearly the Soviet Doctrine in WW2 by Stalin. So such described Pyrrhic victories could just be really null & void when attrition is the objective. No shade intended you understand, just a personal perspective is all.
For Washington treaty that allows transfer/ sales, what if the Royal Navy sold some super dreadnoughts to the Italians? At the time the UK actually had better relations with the Italians than the French, the amount of tonnage the Italians were allowed was partly done to tweak the French. Nobody at the time expected the Fascists to come to power.
That's the saddest bit about the Mediterranean war. The main two sides fighting it had no real bone to pick with the other, broadly speaking they'd always gotten along well- the same couldn't be said about the match-ups in other theatres realIy. I think that showed in the performance of some Italian units, too. Difficult to be highly motivated when you're attacking people you don't have any particular disdain for.
Feel like the Dutch would’ve been a more suitable recepient. Battleship 1913 proposals wasn’t pursued due to it being very expensive and the populace seeing more importance to the defence and spending money to the colonies. Proposals was like 3-5 ships easier if they grabbed like the Orion, King George V (earlier one), or the Iron Duke class. Edit: But with another commenter said, Dutch might not had went ahead to purchase these for they run on coal and the British only bother having oil fired capital ships after the Queen Elizabeth’s. Though the US had turned the Florida class into oil fired battleships but they carry 10 12” cannons not even competitive in WW1 standards let alone Interwar and WWII designs.
For the "Ship too angry to die" in sub-category of armored cruisers, I'll nominate the IJN Nisshin from the Russo-Japanese war. She was almost totally disarmed by the end of the battle of Tsushima but survived.
A ship of the torpedoboat type "too angry to die" would probably be the Italian ship Lupo that during an engagement faced off 3 British light cruisers and 4 destroyers suffering 18 hits from large calibre shells and an unknown number of hits by 40 and 20mm shells.
when i noticed part of this drydock about minelaying submarines in ww2 i rejoiced "yay, it will be about Rubis"... then i was dissapointed, because it was not... :( maybe you should make a video about this excellent minelaying french sub...
The US Navy did "Razee" three cruisers outside the scope of the channel. The USS Albany, USS Columbus and USS Chicago were stripped down to the deck and reconfigured as guided missile cruisers.
For the cruisers that refuse to die category I would recommend USS San Francisco. She's one of the few cruisers that dueled an enemy BB/BC and survived much less fought to a near draw. She survived the hell that was the early naval war in the south Pacific and made it to the end of the war as the third most decorated USN ship.
Regarding stopping the ship quickly, I can't believe that Drach does not reference video recording of USS Missoury doing exactly that in historically and factually entirely accurate documentary film "Battleship". I don't know what could possibly have caused him to do this ommission, probably some illuminaty conspiracy so I will share the historical footage here: ua-cam.com/video/w0BK_hLT-Wo/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Movieclips
6” vs 8”… Drach, I understand the question started with British ships, but think you missed a chance to reference the various Solomons cruiser actions featuring light and heavy cruisers, including the County-class Canberra. In the dark and rain in the Slot, my money is on a Cleveland-class that keeps its speed up and an eye out for Long Lances.
I feel like Yorktown needs an honorable mention. After all, Enterprise took a beating and survived, but Yorktown had to be "sunk" 4 times before she went down.
I might as well throw in Hornet at Santa Cruz. Yes she did go down but that was after taking 3 dive bombs, 2 level bombs involving 1600 pounders, three Type 91 Aerial Torpedoes, 2 proto Kamikazes, 9 Mark 15 Torpedoes (debatable how many detonated) 4-500 5-Inch shells and 4 (give or take) Type 93 Long Lance Torpedoes.
@@ph89787 Speaking of Santa Cruz, Shokaku probably also deserves a mention on that list. Though I’d argue she still didn’t get quite to the level of Enterprise.
Re: Closing the Barn Doors: Search the pages of the Naval Institute Proceedings of the past two decades. there is a brief article written by a former Captain of a Iowa class ship about this procedure. Its been a while since I read it, but recall the method was practiced, and involved reversing the propellers.
Or Wiesbaden. 12" shell to the engine room, crippled and drifting, used for impromptu target practice by most of the Grand Fleet, and not only takes over six hours to sink but also manages to put a torpedo into Marlborough.
The treaty solution for heavy cruisers is that of French or Rodney battleships. Two quad or three triple 8in. turrets forward, turrets aft low protection low caliber, engine spaces fully protected. Secondaries midships, their magazine under powerplant armor, AA astern?
Barn door stops 2 - a member of my family was an officer aboard a river class minesweeper. Their resistor for slowing the ship was a socking great BV! Want to slow down quicker? Add more cold water!
If you're speaking into a voice pipe, then there's a good chance someone's head is at the other end, so an explosion powerful enough to send shrapnel down the pipe might well send something more unpleasant...
For "ship that refused to die", I would actually pick Bunker Hill over Enterprise due to it being the most heavily damaged out of the CVs and survived to steam home to mainland USA.
Franklin would like a word with you. As she had basically been subjected to the “Dick Best treatment.” But those are from one occasion of being hit. Whereas Enterprise was damaged on 6 occasions and there’s a diagram of those hits from her war diary and it’s a mess. She ends up coming in third in casualties because of it.
Probably the most redeeming factor of a 2x4x14" or 2x4x15" all-forward KGV would be the ability to increase torpedo defense and deck armor on the same displacement and the ability to quickly expand follow-on escalator clause designs to a traditional ABX layout with triple 15" or 16" (or maybe even quad...) without the complications created by the superfiring two-gun turret in the extant KGV.
More on stopping: The single shaft 1052 class frigate that I was on would do emergency stopping drills at various speeds from time to time. Aside from the stuff going on in the engine room to stop and revers the shaft, the helmsman would apply full rudder from side to side eating up energy required to change the ships direction. With the ship being equipped with fin stabilizers they too were eating up energy as they were working hard to counter the roles induced by the rudder extreme rudder action.
It occurs to me that if the stabilizer system is sufficiently controllable they could be used in unison, acting a bit like diving planes on a submarine, diverting waterflow up, with the resulting force trying to press the ship deeper into the water, which would be countered by the ship's bouyancy; the process would add a significant amount of drag.
Dissagree re: CV-6. Had CVN-65 blinked outta existence on her maiden voyage, it would have been a death knell for the USN’s nuclear navy. Which would have had huge knock-on effects for both USN’s sub service and US Naval Aviation. Both in terms of ship/boat capability as well as USN funding. CVs are much more expensive to operate than CVNs. OTOH: CVN-65 is outta the scope of the channel.
The New Jersey was a welded hull the hull I think heard was 14" thick. I am a pipefitter and I was wondering how they welded 14" plate? When we weld pipe together we typically bevel the end of the pipe and start with root weld which if you look inside the pipe you should see a root weld seam joining the 2 pieces then a layer or multiple welds to fill in the rest of the bevel. How did they do battleship armor? Do you have any videos highlighting riveting and welding the hulls
2:42:22 Minor point to pick up on, but I feel obliged to pick up on it due to the inaccuracies of our standard historical narratives: Germany's debt was nowhere near as brutal as we, ww1 era Germany, John Maynard Keynes, and the Nazis make out. In fact, the hard reality seems to be the that the people of the victorious powers wanted Germany to be economically hammered, but the establishment (influenced by the likes of Keynes) were concerned about creating a scenario where Germany could not recover, and therefore more or less conspired to make Germany's debt look far more fantastic than it actually was. With the initial arrangements, it was known that, in the time frame Germany was supposed to pay, inflation would make the actual amounts payed far lower than they seemed right after the treaty. It's also the case that post ww1 Germany barely tried to pay it's debts, as minor increases in taxes could have easily achieved it; but they went on to borrow far more money than they ever payed back, and then failed to pay back what they borrowed as well as completely failing to pay back their debts. Post ww1 Germany made a joke of the western allies and we don't even acknowledge it, even after the second world war
wrt the question about the WNT not having the clause preventing sale of ships. iirc, navies of the dominions were regarded as part of the British Navy. I am sure a Philippine navy would be regarded as part of the USN. There could be some potential customers in South America. Chile did buy back Latorre. The UK did offer the two surviving Invincibles to Chile, at 200,000 Pounds each, plus some 600,000 Pounds each for renovation, but Chile declined. Argentina and Brazil did not have the money for more battleships. Greece had the incomplete Salamis sitting in the Vulcan yard in Germany, but did not want it. Litigation over the fate of Salamis ran through most of the 1920s. The Dutch abandoned their pre-WWI battleship plans. Italy, France, and Russia abandoned battleships that had been under construction before the war, so they are unlikely to be interested in buying more. The only other power of any size that comes to mind is China, but it's navy at the time appears to have been a shambles. So, I don't think there would be a market for old, war-worn, ships with no torpedo protection, no deck protection, and coal fired.
@@WALTERBROADDUS iirc, the US did "stand up" a Philippine government in the late 30s, long after it could have been useful as a dump for surplus battleships in 22. But, given the precedent set by the treaty's handling of the Dominion's fleets, the existence, or not, of a Philippine Navy in 22 is irrelevant. It could not have been used to stash surplus ships, if it had existed.
@@stevevalley7835 it just seems kind of bizarre people thinking of the Philippines with battleships in 1922? The Philippine Navy couldn't even do that in 2022.
@@WALTERBROADDUS that is one aspect. The other, which I touched on in reply to Alex's comment, was that anything that was on the disposal list was so obsolete I don't see why anyone would want them. If I squint really hard, I can cook up a scenario where the IJN demands it be allowed to complete Tosa, for displacement parity with Hood. To clear the tonnage, the IJN would need to get rid of Kongo. That is one way I can see a really decent ship being on the market. An even more desperate attempt would be someone buying the incomplete Caracciolo, buying surplus oil-fired boilers and armor from the US, buying surplus armament and turrets from someone, and bashing it all together.
@@stevevalley7835 🙇🏻♂️Patreon Questions always are head scratching. I'm still wondering why anyone would worry about dying from stuff coming down a voice pipe? It's sort of like worrying about being hit by a meteor.🤷🏽♂️☄
Regarding my question, you make a good point. I didn't consider the advances in ASW tactics and equipment from the First to the Second World Wars would make a minelaying mission much more dangerous.
Fort Drum's problem wasn't the gun. It was the elevation allowed by the turrets! The USS Texas had the same problem. They only had a 15-degree elevation.
The voice pipe will likely sonicly choke the flow through the pipe so the max pressure would be lower and the pipe would choke off the impulse coupling so it's unlikely to carry a blast very far. That being said it still could launch stuff out of it fast enough to take out an eye or really cut someone up.
Much applause for Mr Drach striving to pronounce lieutenant correctly ) (& if anyone would reject that correct pronunciation, but still deliver the standard 'sergeant' and 'colonel' without a second thought, and not have the consistency to reject the whole language for its idiosyncracies - a pox upon them!)
I would also class USS Atlanta as too angry to die. A long lance midships, a load of 8 inch shells from friendly fire as well as shell hits from Japanese forces, yet she still manages to help knock out Akatsuki AND remain afloat the next day. Not bad for a lightly armoured AA cruiser.
In hindsight, given that US torpedoes didn't work well in the early part of WWII and could be as much danger to the ship that fired them as the enemy, perhaps it was very good that US doctrine didn't put torpedo launchers on their cruisers.
have you thought of doing a video on comparing the German and Italian navy's in WW2. We talk about the Bismarck and the submarines and ignore the rest, but when you get down to it the Italian navy was as large and powerful, just not aggressively used.
49:00 Submarine ramming has sunk a modern steel commercial ship. In 2001 the USN Greeneville submarine rammed a Japanese fishing ship of metal construction. Ship sank in ten minutes, killing 9 of 35 on the ship. The submarine suffered mild damage. Ramming occurred upon a rapid surfacing of the submarine.
There is no such thing as "Harvey Steel". HARVEYIZED (cemented/case-hardened nickel- or, if you are money-restricted, mild steel) armor was originally based on the then-new high-strength French Schneider et Cie. homogeneous, ductile nickel-steel armor, which had just in 1890 made British Compound Armor obsolete, developed by ex-Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company employee last-named Harvey, was the first of the superior face-hardened one-layer all-steel armors that could shatter most steel naval AP projectiles then just being introduced to replace the older Palliser/Grüson chilled-cast-iron AP projectiles. The final side-armor called German Krupp "KC" armor introduced in 1894 was chromium-nickel-steel (stronger than plain nickel-steel) with a deep, somewhat softer face behind the thin, but extremely hard, Harveyized face surface. Note that some later Krupp-type face-hardened armors, such as Japanese Vickers Hardened extremely thick side armor, only for the YAMATO Class warships, and the pre-WWI US battleship Midvale and Bethlehem Non-Cemented side armors, skipped the Harveyized surface layer completely with minimal loss in resistance.
You might have missed it as Drach didn't put too fine a point on it but in using the Iowa class example, the ships have skegs on their inboard shafts. With the rudders turned inward you get something like this (with the skegs forming the vertical lines and the rudders forming the horizontal lines in my "sketch" viewed from above): stern _____ | | | | bow This gives you a kinda 4 sided box (with the bottom of the hull being the 4th side) with the ocean pushing in from the forward (bow) direction which means there's only one direction for the water pressure to escape and that's down. Mostly... If you turned the rudders outboard you get something like this: stern __ __ | | | | bow Water could still pass past the outside edges of the rudders in addition to being pushed down so, less resistance => slower slowing of the ship => longer stopping distance.
@@seafodder6129 Thanks, especially for the diagrams, I was thinking that with the rudders outboard the hull would be less hydrodaynamic than with them inboard. Your diagram really demostrated what is going on.
Stubborn cruisers refusing to sink? Mogami at Midway, survived a collision as well as many dive-bombers wrecking its upperworks. Honorable mention, American cruisers off'n the Canal which survived losing bows to sail to safety with coconut logs standing in for bows?
some further repercussions from Russia winning, or at least not catastrophically losing, Tsushima, might be.... 1) Teddy Roosevelt might have decided to not become the arbiter of peace, which would alter the Treaty of Portsmouth. This *might* lead to the war being longer, with the result that... 2) Russia might not have gone through its first revolution, at least not in 1905. A revolution of some sort in Russia was inevitable though. The tsarist system was failing on so many other fronts. 3) Japan might have decided it could not contend with the european powers on an equal footing, thus altering the way the rest of the century played out in the Pacific. They had, after all, taken such a veer in their foreign policy just 30 years previously, with the Meiji restoration. the list could potentially go on to affect many different tendrils of subsequent history...
@@hlynkacg9529 it's not just that, though, they sank three heavy cruisers on top of that. One can mull over the loss of the CVEs in relation the battle, but trading them and 2 DDs and 1 DE at that stage in the war was worth it given what little remained of the IJN by then.
37:15 As to a Phillipino Navy gifted with Washington Treaty USN warships "heavily subsidized by the US" that is even less unlikely. President Coolidge was elected to power in 1922 by promising to cut the entire Federal Budget from a ridiculous (at the time) 6 billion dollars in half in 8 years. He almost made it. Total Federal expenditures fell drastically throughout the 20s, and the 1928 Federal Budget was 3.1 billion when Coolidge left in 1928. He almost made it. There was barely room for an American Navy in the budget, never mind a Phillipino one.
Pffftthhh! Warspite refused to die because they didn't want to be sunk in home port by the British throwing coal at them _again..._ Better to sink at sea fighting than return to *that* particular fate.
From around 1h 32min to 41min section on Box Armour Protection... Would it be super-sneaky (or even possible!) for the County class cruisers to ship their intended armour belt plates as ballast*, at least when deploying to their Stations so that they can be more rapidly fitted with the belt they totally weren't fitted for but not with (according to the design schematics submitted to international observers as per the Washington Naval Treaty...)? Also, do we have an idea of how/where the belt which they weren't designed to have was applied - was this externally mounted? would it take long in a dockyard? could a ship even self-apply the plates with cranes and ship's boats etc? *I do not like the idea of the weight being kept on the upper deck for the passage as it would be a lot of top-weight doing unpleasant things to the ship stability
Being somewhat tied up during my engineering years with tanks which fired APDS rounds I often wonder what a 16" APDS round would be capable of. Bearing in mind a 120mm will penetrate 14"+ of rolled armour. Smooth bore would be useless over the ranges at sea and rifled would not last very long. Nevertheless - what fun seeing a round go right through a battleship - maybe. (I jest)
Go right through is correct, but no one who isn't right in the path is likely to care. Ships don't get sunk by having small (say, 8") through-and-through holes made in their upper works. There is just so much volume to a ship that they really need the behind armor effect of an explosive charge to accomplish much.
@1:59:35 FDR who pushed thru development of the CVEs and CVLs! Especially the CVEs which were absolutely critical to the Battle of the Atlantic. The USN didn’t want these ‘inferior’ ships although the RN HMS Audacity had proved their worth.
I forget the name of the Fletcher that took several Kamikaze and bombs but at the end it was unrecognizable. She would get my DD vote. Santa Fe had a crazy amount of damage that she came back from.
16:00 "The performance of duty of the officers and men on the Enterprise under fire and their effective damage control measures were outstanding, of the highest order and the most effective that I have seen in one year's service in (Task Force 58)." -Vice Admiral Marc "Pete" Mitscher after Enterprise's forward elevator went sky high on 14 May 1945.
The Armour box question - RE: The County class - reminds me of how high my British cruisers sit in World of Warships and how easy their citadels are to critically hit :((
Fort Drum was'nt seriously threatened during the Japanese invasion. They had enough stocks of food water, and ammo to hold out for a while. They were ordered by high command to surrender which they resisted.
To what end? You've lost Manila. You lost Battan. You have lost Corregidor. Holding Fort Drum is meaningless. Spending an effort to take it, is equally meaningless.
@@WALTERBROADDUS I guess it depends on how soon you want to join up with the death march. Or be beheaded on the spot just for the Japs pure pleasure of it. I think I would prefer to go down fighting.
@@rogersmith7396 there is a third option. Escape. Having watched a biography on TV about a pair of army officers who managed to take a boat and sell out of harm's Way to Australia. You a submarines were running the blockade to Corregidor. I would think it would be possible to try and evacuate Fort Drum at night with subs?
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Hi Drac, what do you think would have happened (a what if) if the British pacific fleet had of encountered a typhoon like typhoon cobra when it hit the Us fleet?
The vast majority of decorations/awards given to ships are usually given for doing the bare minimum of what was expected for that ship, being involved in actions that other ships from the same navy would have been able to accomplish at less expense, simply for being present at a battle even if the ship did little or nothing, and in some cases even to ships that ended up being detrimental to their own side during the engagement in question (I. E. San Francisco’s decorations for her actions during First Guadalcanal). How do you feel about such decorations, and do you feel they obscure or mislead people about a ship’s achievements?
How about a separate video talking about the naval warfare of the Russo-Ukraine war?
I think I still like to know why on Indianpolis return trip after droping her cargo the request for a destroyer escort was dined? was it made to keep the identity of her cargo secret or there is some further cargo she was carrying that the Naval department does not want the Japanese to get any ideas of whats going on?
Can you think of some interesting naval anachronisms? I.e. historical things/events that seem like a miss-match of eras. E.g. paddle steamer aircraft carriers or U-boats torpedoing sailing ships
I listen to this to fall asleep, not too interested in ships but the pure flow of information is so satisfying. I have listened to so many of these 3 hour ones!
Some additional info related to your talk about triple-expansion engines:
I was on the USS FOX (CG-33) in the early 1970s. It was a TERRIER-equipped AA guided missile "cruiser" (ship type of all of this class of chip changed by the stroke of a pen) and had just been overhauled and I was part of a group checking out the TERRIER weapon system, including actual firing at test targets. It was my first time aboard a warship at sea. During this several-week process, I learned some things about the ship's powerplant:
(1) The boilers had 1200-pounds/square-inch pressure, DOUBLE that used by the most powerful US warship boilers in WWII.
(2) When I was passing a door to the boiler room while the ship was doing high-speed trails, it opened to let a power-plant crewman -- termed a "snipe" -- come onto the outer region of the ship. A blast of hot air hit me in the face like opening an food-c00king oven turned to "broil". Those boilers and the rooms they were in were HOT!
(3) When locating a steam leak from a pipe or casing, the steam was invisible until it had cooled down considerably. It was also EXTREMELY dangerous! One of the main ways to find such leaks, I was told, was to get a wooden broom handle and very slowly move forward into the area of the leak, waving the handle from side to side and up and down in front of you. You found the leak when the handle WAS SLICED IN TWO BY THE STEAM JET!!
Those boiler rooms were Hell on Earth, it seems...
You are dead on correct. My uncle worked on those engines during WWII. Said the same thing about steam leaks and brooms.
Yeah, superheated steam is no joke, basically a WaterJet Cutter without the abrasive. In exchange it's so hot it's "dry" and has no or very little water vapor, making it invisible until it starts to condensate the air.
The thought of there being an invisible, undetected leak that can power wash through your skin and bones in under a second; with the added bonus of 2nd and 3rd degree burns is terrifying.
To make it even worse, I know with regular steam it burns you but doesn't destroy your nerves; so you'll still feel and keep feeling everything. It also won't cauterize the wound, so if it's bad and you're in shock you better have a buddy nearby.
The better way to find leaks was to tie a rag to the end of the handle since that would find it quicker than the handle itself. I used to work with a 1500# steam system and yeah steam at that pressure can cut wood but it won't do it instantly.
@@heirofaniu that's how a friend of mine does it. He works for a natural gas company and deals with superheated steam on a regular basis.
You are the first English historian that I have EVER heard to use the words "British" and "failure" together. Not bashing, but in literature, speaking to other English historians and battlefield guides (respected 'guild members', or even (probable) English/Britsh commentors (which may be unfair to include with the former two categories) there's usually a extensive excuse or fancy dance around an admission of failure. Very refreshing. Really like your videos and narration.
Three hours of naval chat. Could not think of a better way to start 2023. Keep up the great work!
I'm loving the idea of a Philippine navy equipped with multiple early dreadnoughts. 😀
A lot of destroyers make good 'Ship Too Angry to Die' candidates. These were very, very angry vessels.
I'd also nominate the second USS Laffey (she came by the nickname of The Ship That Would Not Die honestly), the other ships of Taffy 3, and most of the ships at Pearl Harbor (won't die, even when you sink them), with special mention to USS Shaw (no worries, mate- we're still sailing half a ship!).
Musashi gets a honorable mention as she managed to eat a lot of firepower before she finally sank, even if she was never able to enter surface combat.
On the Midway we did an emergency crash back stop. We closed the ahead throttle and then opened the astern throttle valves quickly. The whole back end of the ship bounced up and down violently.
That's a big girl to be bouncing like that.
Concerning the superiority of Russian 12" APC shells: During the development of the British post-Jutland 12" Greenboy APC shells, there was a comparative test of the Russian 12" (Model 1908, believe) at a 20 degree impact angle against 8" British Cemented Armor (CA). It was found that the Russian shell could remain intact after penetrating this thickness and the British shell could not. The reason was that this British shell was made with CAST steel blanks shaped roughly to the final shell shape that were then machined to the final form by machining away the outer and inner excess steel and then hardened and tempered to give the final completed shell body and nose, to which the base plug and AP cap/windscreen and driving band were attached. No mechanical working of the shell body or nose was applied, unlike the heavy forging using presses and hammers done to the larger 13.5-16" Greenboy and later NELSON/RODNEY APC shells prior to the final machining and hardening/tempering. Those larger British APC shells, due to this pre-machining metal-working, greatly improved the "grain" of the shell's crystal structure, something which was not done to the 12", with the result that the larger British APC shells could easily penetrate in an intact condition 2/3-rds-caliber CA armor at 20 degrees, which became their acceptance test standard. Indeed, during the HOOD armor design tests, these hard-capped British 15" APC shells easily penetrated half-caliber CA plates at 40 degrees (!!) with minimal damage. No later British large APC or even the smaller 8" SAPC or 6" CPBC shells were ever made directly from a cast blank ever again, to my knowledge.
Given the weirdly overperforming shells are Russian 1911 pattern SAP shells, the ones with the really high C/M ratio, thin walls, etc. it'd be interesting to see how Gaijin expect those to penetrate as well as they are.
@@JoramTriesGaming Or even better, how Gaijin figures a single 6" HE shell can burst on the deck and detonate a magazine....
The Douglas Skyraider could connect the folded wings together with a line or bar; for the AD-5, this bar could also be used to mount a block-and-tackle for hoisting cargo into the fuselage. Presumably any aircraft with tie-down points at the wing tips could also use those to connect the wings "over the fuselage".
In regards to Russia winning against Japan, I think you overlooked some knockon effects. Losing that war was a severe blow to the prestige of the Zar. If they instead win, the soviet revolution might fail or not even happen in the first place and that could have massive changes in history.
One of the more outlandish, but still possible scenarios would be that emboldened by their victory Russia invades more of China, gets embroiled in a lengthy and costly slog and thus refuses Serbia's call to arms, making WW1 not happen at it's historical start and delaying it until some other trigger sparks off the powder keg.
@17:00 USS Laffey DD-724. Who’s moniker “The ship that would not die” also comes to mind due to her taking on bomb and kamikaze strikes. She’s even still afloat today as a museum ship
Too angry to be sold for scrap
On Battle Honours: in cases of ships being gallant losses, the VC is often awarded to the captain - at least that's how the citations for Roope (Glowworm), Fegan (Jervis Bay) and Wilkinson (Li-Wo) read.
I'm surprised you didn't mention one of the ways the Russians would have had a greater chance of winning Tsushima: the Kamchatka somehow manages to sink itself as it sails out of port.
Yeah but then the Russian fleet would’ve succumbed to Japan’s North Sea Torpedo Boat Squadron! Clearly Kamchatka foiled that fleet of Torpedo Boats before they could threaten the main Russian Fleet!
@@andrewp8284 those damned torpedo boats Japan stationed at Rorsyth 1832>1974.
@@davidharner5865 Machels navy eat your heart out.
A Pyrrhic victory is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress.
Exactly. It should be mesured against the origin of the term, the battle of Ascyllum, where Phyrrus of Epirus scored a victory over Rome, but sustained such geavy losses that he had to withdraw his army from Italian Peninsula altogether.
Hey drack the smell on ship is oils I just went to nj and I miss that smell. My ffg had same smell. In us navy x is zebra condition Great job overall. Thanks for showing my ship on episode ffg53. I think someone asked in one ep about the 30 hf whips. Aft we cranked them down so ciwis wouldn’t cut down
35:05 I think one of the major things that could happen if Transfers and sales were allowed is possibly another arms race in South America and France seeing what Italy and Germany is doing may pick up a battleship or battle cruiser or 2 as an interim. Same with the Dutch with their grand ideas for a navy in being in the far East, a cheap often would be to have the Iron Dukes or something like that
*option
I meant option not often
I chewed some of the alternatives in a comment a couple hours ago. The South American powers didn't have the money. The two surviving Invincibles were offered to Chile. Chile declined. Agincourt was offered to Brazil. Brazil declined. The only reasonably possible buyer would be the Dutch. They would want a ship that was "turn key", not something they would need to pour a lot of money into. They would want something oil fired, because that was the fuel they had in abundance, on Borneo. iirc, the RN did not put a Farthing into the Iron Dukes and Tiger in the 20s. They were never given torpedo bulges, never converted to oil fuel, no supplemental deck armor added. The USN however, did pour millions into modernizing Florida and Utah, only a few years before Florida was scrapped and Utah converted to a target ship. They received new oil-fired boilers (surplus from the North Dakota program), bulges and deck armor (also surplus from the ND program). But they still carried 12" guns and plodded along at 21kts. Would the Dutch want them, in the early 30s?
@@stevevalley7835 I think they would, assuming they could afford Florida and Utah. The Japanese still had the Fusos and Ises, granted with 14 inch guns, in the battleline. Sending Florida and Utah to the east would force the Japanese to deploy at minimum the Fusos or the Ises, perhaps even both to guaranty killing them without getting hit too bad. Or it might draw out the Nagatos. Any attempt to take Dutch possessions would have to include battleships since even old 12 inch battleships outclass heavy cruisers. So either Japanese hold back from the Dutch colonies for the decisive battle or they have to loose at minimum two Battleships from the line while they fight Florida and Utah. At least going by their plans before the Pearl Harbor plan. Likely it wouldn't have changed much just the burning of oil to get the Japanese battleships to the fight and another battleship vs battleship fight for the historians. The US Fleet Problems really show the difference in capability of 30s and early 40s aircraft. Heck the battles of the java sea might have gone very differently with a couple of old heavyweights present.
@@drafty9580 for the heck of it, I tried to find a sale price for Florida, but came up empty. She was broken up in a navy yard, so no labor and material cost for the breakup. The newspapers said the metal was offered for bid, but did not report what the winning bid was. A dozen years earlier, Dreadnought was sold for scrap, for $176,000. The first question would be could the Netherlands buy Florida and Utah for less that it cost to build De Ruyter? I have not found construction cost for De Ruyter. Of course, the second question is would the Netherlands want two slow, old, ships?
@@stevevalley7835 'oil-fired' is the deal make\break here. Plenty in Java, that is why WWII Pacific War occurred.
One of my ships was a Knox Class DE/FF that had large fin stabilizers. They did indeed cause a very odd and somewhat disorienting roll which at times seemed contrary to anything close the desired stability. They also made a good bit of low pitched noise within the hull as they operated which if your berth was close amidships would keep you up at night.
I nominate HMAS Canberra (1), not as a cruiser too angry to die but rather as a cruiser in too foul a mood so to do. Let's face it, after being disabled by Mikawa's force; having to then put up with your american allies taking 263 5" shells and five torpedos to scuttle you would be enough to put anyone in a vile state of mind.
1:47:03 Pyrrhic victories are usually ascribed to *wars,* no? Like if you beat the Persians, but weaken yourself so much that the Muslim Arabs can conquer you. Also, Coral Sea was a *strategic victory* for the Allies, since it stopped Japanese expansion, and secured SLOCs to Australia. That's nothing to sneeze at.
Greetings from that bit of the world that gets 2023 first! So Happy New Year!!
Battle of The Chesapeake\Virginia Capes would be an eXcellent special. This and Arnold's actions at Second Saratoga were truly the decisive events of the War of American Colonial Independence, one being utterly dependent upon the other. Editted for typo.
I would have thought that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was a definite pyrrhic victory. Yes the Japanese wrecked the US battle fleet, but they failed to knocked out PH as a base of operations for the US Pacific Fleet, and they also forced the US to use aircraft carriers as offensive weapons (instead of just a scouting force) which ultimately resulted in the defeat of the IJN.
I would argue against Coral Sea being a Pyric victory because the two damage Japanese carriers were absent at Midway when their presence could have turned a Japanese defeat into victory.
Coral Sea (where I live) is percieved here as the naval turning point in WW2 which we are very grateful for.
Cheers for the answers as always Drach! Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Heres to a naval history filled 2023!
Same here! Happy new year to Drachinifel, misses Drachinifel and all watchers and their families!
Tbh Drach I think there are nuances to consider when describing a "Pyrrhic Victory". One of the nuances is was the tactical losses incured worth the strategic gain ? Or say, we are producing X amount of ships annually but the enemy can only produce Y amount of comparative ships so our losses maybe greater but the attrition on the enemy is of greater worth. Battle of Kursk comes to mind in this regard concerning PanzerWaffe loss replacement to the Soviet T34 replacements. To myself a "Real Pyrrhic Victory" is perhaps when losses are not abled to be ammended which leaves one's forces perminatly disabled by such a victory. Acceptable although large losses which would achieve the crippling attrition on the enemy was clearly the Soviet Doctrine in WW2 by Stalin. So such described Pyrrhic victories could just be really null & void when attrition is the objective. No shade intended you understand, just a personal perspective is all.
For Washington treaty that allows transfer/ sales, what if the Royal Navy sold some super dreadnoughts to the Italians? At the time the UK actually had better relations with the Italians than the French, the amount of tonnage the Italians were allowed was partly done to tweak the French. Nobody at the time expected the Fascists to come to power.
That's the saddest bit about the Mediterranean war. The main two sides fighting it had no real bone to pick with the other, broadly speaking they'd always gotten along well- the same couldn't be said about the match-ups in other theatres realIy. I think that showed in the performance of some Italian units, too. Difficult to be highly motivated when you're attacking people you don't have any particular disdain for.
That's nice and theory , but where are they going to get the money?
Feel like the Dutch would’ve been a more suitable recepient. Battleship 1913 proposals wasn’t pursued due to it being very expensive and the populace seeing more importance to the defence and spending money to the colonies. Proposals was like 3-5 ships easier if they grabbed like the Orion, King George V (earlier one), or the Iron Duke class.
Edit: But with another commenter said, Dutch might not had went ahead to purchase these for they run on coal and the British only bother having oil fired capital ships after the Queen Elizabeth’s. Though the US had turned the Florida class into oil fired battleships but they carry 10 12” cannons not even competitive in WW1 standards let alone Interwar and WWII designs.
@@TheRandCrews Dutch snagging Lion, princess royal, and Tiger though. And doing a late 20s conversion to oil. Basically a Kongo equivalent
For the "Ship too angry to die" in sub-category of armored cruisers, I'll nominate the IJN Nisshin from the Russo-Japanese war. She was almost totally disarmed by the end of the battle of Tsushima but survived.
Also: she happened to be a ship whose crew included the then-ensign Isoroku Yamamoto.
Nothing compared to Kamchatka. Do you even know how many torpedo boats she single-handedly fended off?
1:28:27 - "Flagship to _Kamchatka_ - have sighted torpedo boats"
A ship of the torpedoboat type "too angry to die" would probably be the Italian ship Lupo that during an engagement faced off 3 British light cruisers and 4 destroyers suffering 18 hits from large calibre shells and an unknown number of hits by 40 and 20mm shells.
when i noticed part of this drydock about minelaying submarines in ww2 i rejoiced "yay, it will be about Rubis"... then i was dissapointed, because it was not... :( maybe you should make a video about this excellent minelaying french sub...
Thank you, Drachinifel.
The US Navy did "Razee" three cruisers outside the scope of the channel. The USS Albany, USS Columbus and USS Chicago were stripped down to the deck and reconfigured as guided missile cruisers.
Drach, can you figure out somehow in this episode to work in how superior HMS Warspite is? 😂
Its understood.
We known Warspite would have utterly smashed Yamato had the IJN been brave enough to sail out against her.
Plot armour rules.
@@sugarnads Indeed sir….indeed! 😉
@@sugarnads however, had Enterprise joined battle with Her twelve 16"\73s...
For the cruisers that refuse to die category I would recommend USS San Francisco. She's one of the few cruisers that dueled an enemy BB/BC and survived much less fought to a near draw. She survived the hell that was the early naval war in the south Pacific and made it to the end of the war as the third most decorated USN ship.
Fortunately the battering San Francisco took in that duel with Hiei was primarily from the 6" secondary battery.
Regarding stopping the ship quickly, I can't believe that Drach does not reference video recording of USS Missoury doing exactly that in historically and factually entirely accurate documentary film "Battleship". I don't know what could possibly have caused him to do this ommission, probably some illuminaty conspiracy so I will share the historical footage here:
ua-cam.com/video/w0BK_hLT-Wo/v-deo.html&ab_channel=Movieclips
Regards 02:48:13 having to spend 21 years as an Lieutenant because he missed his one chance at early promotion to Commander. That must have stung.
6” vs 8”… Drach, I understand the question started with British ships, but think you missed a chance to reference the various Solomons cruiser actions featuring light and heavy cruisers, including the County-class Canberra.
In the dark and rain in the Slot, my money is on a Cleveland-class that keeps its speed up and an eye out for Long Lances.
I feel like Yorktown needs an honorable mention. After all, Enterprise took a beating and survived, but Yorktown had to be "sunk" 4 times before she went down.
I might as well throw in Hornet at Santa Cruz. Yes she did go down but that was after taking 3 dive bombs, 2 level bombs involving 1600 pounders, three Type 91 Aerial Torpedoes, 2 proto Kamikazes, 9 Mark 15 Torpedoes (debatable how many detonated) 4-500 5-Inch shells and 4 (give or take) Type 93 Long Lance Torpedoes.
@@ph89787
Speaking of Santa Cruz, Shokaku probably also deserves a mention on that list. Though I’d argue she still didn’t get quite to the level of Enterprise.
@@bkjeong4302 the difference between Enterprise and Shoukaku with their bomb damage was that Enterprise could resume flight ops. Shoukaku could not.
Re: Closing the Barn Doors: Search the pages of the Naval Institute Proceedings of the past two decades. there is a brief article written by a former Captain of a Iowa class ship about this procedure. Its been a while since I read it, but recall the method was practiced, and involved reversing the propellers.
ua-cam.com/video/wcJSV3-Lr8E/v-deo.html
No mention of Seydlitz for “ship too angry to die?” The battlecruiser that just. Wouldn’t. Sink.
Or Wiesbaden. 12" shell to the engine room, crippled and drifting, used for impromptu target practice by most of the Grand Fleet, and not only takes over six hours to sink but also manages to put a torpedo into Marlborough.
The treaty solution for heavy cruisers is that of French or Rodney battleships. Two quad or three triple 8in. turrets forward, turrets aft low protection low caliber, engine spaces fully protected. Secondaries midships, their magazine under powerplant armor, AA astern?
Barn door stops 2 - a member of my family was an officer aboard a river class minesweeper. Their resistor for slowing the ship was a socking great BV! Want to slow down quicker? Add more cold water!
BV?
@@davecollier583 BV is the secret power source for the RN, RAC and RAF
@@HistoryNeedsYou Would it be the most important part of any RN Warship by any chance?
@@davecollier583 yup! Not only the secret power source but the secret weapon too
Happy new year Drac!
If you're speaking into a voice pipe, then there's a good chance someone's head is at the other end, so an explosion powerful enough to send shrapnel down the pipe might well send something more unpleasant...
For "ship that refused to die", I would actually pick Bunker Hill over Enterprise due to it being the most heavily damaged out of the CVs and survived to steam home to mainland USA.
Franklin would like a word with you. As she had basically been subjected to the “Dick Best treatment.” But those are from one occasion of being hit. Whereas Enterprise was damaged on 6 occasions and there’s a diagram of those hits from her war diary and it’s a mess. She ends up coming in third in casualties because of it.
Probably the most redeeming factor of a 2x4x14" or 2x4x15" all-forward KGV would be the ability to increase torpedo defense and deck armor on the same displacement and the ability to quickly expand follow-on escalator clause designs to a traditional ABX layout with triple 15" or 16" (or maybe even quad...) without the complications created by the superfiring two-gun turret in the extant KGV.
Barry Gough was my university professor
More on stopping: The single shaft 1052 class frigate that I was on would do emergency stopping drills at various speeds from time to time. Aside from the stuff going on in the engine room to stop and revers the shaft, the helmsman would apply full rudder from side to side eating up energy required to change the ships direction. With the ship being equipped with fin stabilizers they too were eating up energy as they were working hard to counter the roles induced by the rudder extreme rudder action.
It occurs to me that if the stabilizer system is sufficiently controllable they could be used in unison, acting a bit like diving planes on a submarine, diverting waterflow up, with the resulting force trying to press the ship deeper into the water, which would be countered by the ship's bouyancy; the process would add a significant amount of drag.
Dissagree re: CV-6. Had CVN-65 blinked outta existence on her maiden voyage, it would have been a death knell for the USN’s nuclear navy. Which would have had huge knock-on effects for both USN’s sub service and US Naval Aviation. Both in terms of ship/boat capability as well as USN funding. CVs are much more expensive to operate than CVNs. OTOH: CVN-65 is outta the scope of the channel.
The New Jersey was a welded hull the hull I think heard was 14" thick. I am a pipefitter and I was wondering how they welded 14" plate? When we weld pipe together we typically bevel the end of the pipe and start with root weld which if you look inside the pipe you should see a root weld seam joining the 2 pieces then a layer or multiple welds to fill in the rest of the bevel. How did they do battleship armor? Do you have any videos highlighting riveting and welding the hulls
My very first bike was a Sears Allstate. Then I got a second one found in a Kentucky barn. It would do 85’
2:42:22 Minor point to pick up on, but I feel obliged to pick up on it due to the inaccuracies of our standard historical narratives: Germany's debt was nowhere near as brutal as we, ww1 era Germany, John Maynard Keynes, and the Nazis make out. In fact, the hard reality seems to be the that the people of the victorious powers wanted Germany to be economically hammered, but the establishment (influenced by the likes of Keynes) were concerned about creating a scenario where Germany could not recover, and therefore more or less conspired to make Germany's debt look far more fantastic than it actually was. With the initial arrangements, it was known that, in the time frame Germany was supposed to pay, inflation would make the actual amounts payed far lower than they seemed right after the treaty. It's also the case that post ww1 Germany barely tried to pay it's debts, as minor increases in taxes could have easily achieved it; but they went on to borrow far more money than they ever payed back, and then failed to pay back what they borrowed as well as completely failing to pay back their debts. Post ww1 Germany made a joke of the western allies and we don't even acknowledge it, even after the second world war
wrt the question about the WNT not having the clause preventing sale of ships. iirc, navies of the dominions were regarded as part of the British Navy. I am sure a Philippine navy would be regarded as part of the USN. There could be some potential customers in South America. Chile did buy back Latorre. The UK did offer the two surviving Invincibles to Chile, at 200,000 Pounds each, plus some 600,000 Pounds each for renovation, but Chile declined. Argentina and Brazil did not have the money for more battleships. Greece had the incomplete Salamis sitting in the Vulcan yard in Germany, but did not want it. Litigation over the fate of Salamis ran through most of the 1920s. The Dutch abandoned their pre-WWI battleship plans. Italy, France, and Russia abandoned battleships that had been under construction before the war, so they are unlikely to be interested in buying more. The only other power of any size that comes to mind is China, but it's navy at the time appears to have been a shambles. So, I don't think there would be a market for old, war-worn, ships with no torpedo protection, no deck protection, and coal fired.
I'm a little confused about one section of your comment. What Philippine Navy? They don't become independent till 1946?
@@WALTERBROADDUS iirc, the US did "stand up" a Philippine government in the late 30s, long after it could have been useful as a dump for surplus battleships in 22. But, given the precedent set by the treaty's handling of the Dominion's fleets, the existence, or not, of a Philippine Navy in 22 is irrelevant. It could not have been used to stash surplus ships, if it had existed.
@@stevevalley7835 it just seems kind of bizarre people thinking of the Philippines with battleships in 1922? The Philippine Navy couldn't even do that in 2022.
@@WALTERBROADDUS that is one aspect. The other, which I touched on in reply to Alex's comment, was that anything that was on the disposal list was so obsolete I don't see why anyone would want them. If I squint really hard, I can cook up a scenario where the IJN demands it be allowed to complete Tosa, for displacement parity with Hood. To clear the tonnage, the IJN would need to get rid of Kongo. That is one way I can see a really decent ship being on the market. An even more desperate attempt would be someone buying the incomplete Caracciolo, buying surplus oil-fired boilers and armor from the US, buying surplus armament and turrets from someone, and bashing it all together.
@@stevevalley7835 🙇🏻♂️Patreon Questions always are head scratching. I'm still wondering why anyone would worry about dying from stuff coming down a voice pipe? It's sort of like worrying about being hit by a meteor.🤷🏽♂️☄
Regarding my question, you make a good point. I didn't consider the advances in ASW tactics and equipment from the First to the Second World Wars would make a minelaying mission much more dangerous.
Good Morning and Happy New Year Drach and Lady,
Fort Drum's problem wasn't the gun. It was the elevation allowed by the turrets! The USS Texas had the same problem. They only had a 15-degree elevation.
Can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoy and look forward to your videos 😊
The voice pipe will likely sonicly choke the flow through the pipe so the max pressure would be lower and the pipe would choke off the impulse coupling so it's unlikely to carry a blast very far. That being said it still could launch stuff out of it fast enough to take out an eye or really cut someone up.
was there a requirement for HMS Aeneas to not exceed a certain distance from HMS Dido to thwart the risk of scuttling?
"A slow, gun-based destroyer..." aka a Practice Target. :)
First drydock of 2023, let's get into it lads.
Happy New year to Drach and all, good luck on the upcoming year and everything it brings you.
27:00
That’s the latest Mrs. Halver series 3800 radar-jamming Framus.
Much applause for Mr Drach striving to pronounce lieutenant correctly )
(& if anyone would reject that correct pronunciation, but still deliver the standard 'sergeant' and 'colonel' without a second thought, and not have the consistency to reject the whole language for its idiosyncracies - a pox upon them!)
I would have somebody to have bought the HMS Agincourt post WW1 and then put it back into service during WW2 doing shore bombardment.
I would also class USS Atlanta as too angry to die. A long lance midships, a load of 8 inch shells from friendly fire as well as shell hits from Japanese forces, yet she still manages to help knock out Akatsuki AND remain afloat the next day. Not bad for a lightly armoured AA cruiser.
Drach...can you confirm that the black dot at the top of the smoke plume in the picture of CV-6 is the forward elevator 400 feet in the air?
An elevator, weighing several tons, blown 400 feet in the air by an explosion that did not destroy the entire ship? Seems highly unlikely.
Yes, this is the famous picture of the elevator completely airborn.
If you have to be on the recieving end of fifty 15" shells, i think one would prefer it be over in 5 min.
In hindsight, given that US torpedoes didn't work well in the early part of WWII and could be as much danger to the ship that fired them as the enemy, perhaps it was very good that US doctrine didn't put torpedo launchers on their cruisers.
have you thought of doing a video on comparing the German and Italian navy's in WW2. We talk about the Bismarck and the submarines and ignore the rest, but when you get down to it the Italian navy was as large and powerful, just not aggressively used.
Happy New Year to all!
Happy New year, to all Drachonians! May '23 be better than '22
Sorry I am new to your channel. Most episodes talk about treaty restrictions. But its war. Why would the countries still go by the treaties?
49:00 Submarine ramming has sunk a modern steel commercial ship. In 2001 the USN Greeneville submarine rammed a Japanese fishing ship of metal construction. Ship sank in ten minutes, killing 9 of 35 on the ship.
The submarine suffered mild damage. Ramming occurred upon a rapid surfacing of the submarine.
There is no such thing as "Harvey Steel". HARVEYIZED (cemented/case-hardened nickel- or, if you are money-restricted, mild steel) armor was originally based on the then-new high-strength French Schneider et Cie. homogeneous, ductile nickel-steel armor, which had just in 1890 made British Compound Armor obsolete, developed by ex-Bethlehem Iron and Steel Company employee last-named Harvey, was the first of the superior face-hardened one-layer all-steel armors that could shatter most steel naval AP projectiles then just being introduced to replace the older Palliser/Grüson chilled-cast-iron AP projectiles. The final side-armor called German Krupp "KC" armor introduced in 1894 was chromium-nickel-steel (stronger than plain nickel-steel) with a deep, somewhat softer face behind the thin, but extremely hard, Harveyized face surface. Note that some later Krupp-type face-hardened armors, such as Japanese Vickers Hardened extremely thick side armor, only for the YAMATO Class warships, and the pre-WWI US battleship Midvale and Bethlehem Non-Cemented side armors, skipped the Harveyized surface layer completely with minimal loss in resistance.
On to the next one.
On Barn Door Stops, wouldn't it slow the ship more if both rudders were turned outboard rather than inboard?
You might have missed it as Drach didn't put too fine a point on it but in using the Iowa class example, the ships have skegs on their inboard shafts. With the rudders turned inward you get something like this (with the skegs forming the vertical lines and the rudders forming the horizontal lines in my "sketch" viewed from above):
stern
_____
| |
| |
bow
This gives you a kinda 4 sided box (with the bottom of the hull being the 4th side) with the ocean pushing in from the forward (bow) direction which means there's only one direction for the water pressure to escape and that's down. Mostly...
If you turned the rudders outboard you get something like this:
stern
__ __
| |
| |
bow
Water could still pass past the outside edges of the rudders in addition to being pushed down so, less resistance => slower slowing of the ship => longer stopping distance.
@@seafodder6129 Thanks, especially for the diagrams, I was thinking that with the rudders outboard the hull would be less hydrodaynamic than with them inboard. Your diagram really demostrated what is going on.
Stubborn cruisers refusing to sink? Mogami at Midway, survived a collision as well as many dive-bombers wrecking its upperworks. Honorable mention, American cruisers off'n the Canal which survived losing bows to sail to safety with coconut logs standing in for bows?
some further repercussions from Russia winning, or at least not catastrophically losing, Tsushima, might be....
1) Teddy Roosevelt might have decided to not become the arbiter of peace, which would alter the Treaty of Portsmouth. This *might* lead to the war being longer, with the result that...
2) Russia might not have gone through its first revolution, at least not in 1905. A revolution of some sort in Russia was inevitable though. The tsarist system was failing on so many other fronts.
3) Japan might have decided it could not contend with the european powers on an equal footing, thus altering the way the rest of the century played out in the Pacific. They had, after all, taken such a veer in their foreign policy just 30 years previously, with the Meiji restoration.
the list could potentially go on to affect many different tendrils of subsequent history...
I'm very surprised that when listing pyrrhic victories in the Pacific, that Drach didn't mention Samar.
But the Americans won and losing a few DDs, DE and CVEs was well worth the toll it took on the IJN on top of turning them back.
That wasn't a pyrric victory though. A few Destroyers and escort carriers forcing back a major chunk of the enemy fleet is a decisive win.
@@hlynkacg9529 it's not just that, though, they sank three heavy cruisers on top of that. One can mull over the loss of the CVEs in relation the battle, but trading them and 2 DDs and 1 DE at that stage in the war was worth it given what little remained of the IJN by then.
because it wasnt
I would definitely call that one: a Heroic Victory.
what program/game is used to play around with ship design as shown on 2:06:14?
37:15 As to a Phillipino Navy gifted with Washington Treaty USN warships "heavily subsidized by the US" that is even less unlikely. President Coolidge was elected to power in 1922 by promising to cut the entire Federal Budget from a ridiculous (at the time) 6 billion dollars in half in 8 years. He almost made it. Total Federal expenditures fell drastically throughout the 20s, and the 1928 Federal Budget was 3.1 billion when Coolidge left in 1928. He almost made it.
There was barely room for an American Navy in the budget, never mind a Phillipino one.
What Philippine Navy? They don't get independent until 1946? Even in 2023 , they barely have a Navy.
Pffftthhh! Warspite refused to die because they didn't want to be sunk in home port by the British throwing coal at them _again..._ Better to sink at sea fighting than return to *that* particular fate.
From around 1h 32min to 41min section on Box Armour Protection...
Would it be super-sneaky (or even possible!) for the County class cruisers to ship their intended armour belt plates as ballast*, at least when deploying to their Stations so that they can be more rapidly fitted with the belt they totally weren't fitted for but not with (according to the design schematics submitted to international observers as per the Washington Naval Treaty...)?
Also, do we have an idea of how/where the belt which they weren't designed to have was applied - was this externally mounted? would it take long in a dockyard? could a ship even self-apply the plates with cranes and ship's boats etc?
*I do not like the idea of the weight being kept on the upper deck for the passage as it would be a lot of top-weight doing unpleasant things to the ship stability
Being somewhat tied up during my engineering years with tanks which fired APDS rounds I often wonder what a 16" APDS round would be capable of. Bearing in mind a 120mm will penetrate 14"+ of rolled armour. Smooth bore would be useless over the ranges at sea and rifled would not last very long. Nevertheless - what fun seeing a round go right through a battleship - maybe. (I jest)
Tanks however don't have compartments, voids, fuel and water tanks.
Go right through is correct, but no one who isn't right in the path is likely to care. Ships don't get sunk by having small (say, 8") through-and-through holes made in their upper works. There is just so much volume to a ship that they really need the behind armor effect of an explosive charge to accomplish much.
@@kemarisite 🤷🏽♂️ the ever-present, "tanks are not ships" thing continues.
@@WALTERBROADDUS yeah. Definitely needs to be included in the FAQ I've heard Drach was going to work on.
@@WALTERBROADDUS If you have ever seen what an APDS does by kinetic energy only to a fuel tank (the do have fuel tanks you know). I did add - I jest.
The King of Q&A
@1:59:35 FDR who pushed thru development of the CVEs and CVLs! Especially the CVEs which were absolutely critical to the Battle of the Atlantic. The USN didn’t want these ‘inferior’ ships although the RN HMS Audacity had proved their worth.
1:25:00 What is going on with the engine room telegraph?
Greetings from 2022, hope 2023 will treat you all well! 🥂
Unfortunately for the question, the main guns are fakes on the Mikasa, as are the turrets. The ship was stripped to the main deck by the US after ww2
Marder's work has been mostly superseded by Jon Sumida and Nicholas Lambert's work.
I forget the name of the Fletcher that took several Kamikaze and bombs but at the end it was unrecognizable. She would get my DD vote.
Santa Fe had a crazy amount of damage that she came back from.
The Sumner class Laffey had a Kamikaze swarm
16:00 "The performance of duty of the officers and men on the Enterprise under fire and their effective damage control measures were outstanding, of the highest order and the most effective that I have seen in one year's service in (Task Force 58)."
-Vice Admiral Marc "Pete" Mitscher after Enterprise's forward elevator went sky high on 14 May 1945.
What propellant was used in usn large guns
Fort Drum needed more spare parts for it generators and water purification plants the size of the guns is largely irrelevant.
The Armour box question - RE: The County class - reminds me of how high my British cruisers sit in World of Warships and how easy their citadels are to critically hit :((
In wows the citadel includes the machinery spaces so an unupgraded County would be easy prey
Fort Drum was'nt seriously threatened during the Japanese invasion. They had enough stocks of food water, and ammo to hold out for a while. They were ordered by high command to surrender which they resisted.
To what end? You've lost Manila. You lost Battan. You have lost Corregidor. Holding Fort Drum is meaningless. Spending an effort to take it, is equally meaningless.
If you can deny the Japanese the use of the harbor for another month or two till you run out of supplies, that would have added value.
@@WALTERBROADDUS I guess it depends on how soon you want to join up with the death march. Or be beheaded on the spot just for the Japs pure pleasure of it. I think I would prefer to go down fighting.
@@rogersmith7396 understandable sentiment. But once the surrender had been given, Fort Drum would have to comply as well.
@@rogersmith7396 there is a third option. Escape. Having watched a biography on TV about a pair of army officers who managed to take a boat and sell out of harm's Way to Australia. You a submarines were running the blockade to Corregidor. I would think it would be possible to try and evacuate Fort Drum at night with subs?
For Destroyers too angry to die wouldn't Vasilis Georgios be a better call as she saw the ocean floor twice only to sail again ?
Happy New Year Drach.
Other than Savo you could almost say all the naval battles around Gaudalcanal were pyrrhic victories.